For a dollar, I bought a rollicking ride down a forgotten memory lane.

The buck went for a book, one I hadn’t read in a long time. Maybe you have a book like that, one you browse every now and then to get reacquainted. Maybe the book itself — story, subject, writing — has a recurring pull on you.

Or maybe the book takes you to the time when you first picked it up. You recall who you were, perhaps an entirely different person, certainly younger.

My rediscovered book did all that, mixing two wistful touchstones of many grown boys of a certain age: baseball and childhood.

“The Bronx Zoo” was co-written by Sparky Lyle, a superb relief pitcher and all-around fun-ster. In 1977, he won the Cy Young Award as the American League’s best pitcher; over his career, he was renowned for clowning, which included an indelicate locker room habit of dropping his baseball pants to sit on teammates’ birthday cakes.

As a kid — and a baseball-loving smart-aleck — I appreciated Lyle’s endeavors on and off the field. In 1979, when he came out with “The Bronx Zoo” — a tell-all about the insanity of playing for the New York Yankees — I biked miles to the nearest bookstore to snap up one of the first hardcover copies.

As a kid, I had two loves: If I wasn’t playing baseball, I was reading about baseball history. That’s why I still can tell you who batted behind Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig on the 1927 New York Yankees’ famed “Murderers’ Row” (Bob Meusel, of course).

But amid endless baseball tomes, “The Bronx Zoo,” co-written with Peter Golenbock, leaped out as different. It shoved the reader headlong through an entire season, delving behind the scenes and minds of pro baseball, many crude and crazy. That book was a constant companion that summer of ’79.

Meanwhile, that period marked a turning point for me. It was my 15th year, the time when a boy realizes — in ways good and sad — that things are about to change. I looked forward to getting a driver’s license the next year, but didn’t particularly like the notion of working a job to pay for gas. And though I figured I’d remain a fan forever, my meager baseball skills were eroding to the point that I knew that it soon would be time to hang up my mitt and focus on football.

Page 2 of 3 - Time was ticking, and I knew it. As if locking a nostalgic treasure into a time capsule, I read “The Bronx Zoo” over and over that summer.

And then I grew up.

Since then, I hadn’t much thought about the book. But weeks ago at a pawn shop, my eyes flitted across paperbacks, suddenly stopping: “The Bronx Zoo”! I handed over $1 and took it home for a few laughs.

But the more I read, the more I felt pulled back in time. I didn’t exactly feel 15 again. But I relished revisiting the familiar territory — standing on the edge of childhood, though still wild about something as carefree as baseball.

Still, at book’s end, I felt melancholy. I wasn’t pining for any lost youth. You can’t become young again, that much we know.

Rather, I demanded to myself, what happened to my romance with baseball? In the past 20 years, I’ve been to maybe five major-league games. This season, like every year, I half-heartedly pledged to throw myself back into the sport. I’ve already lost interest.

Why? What happened to my “Bronx Zoo” days? For answers, there was my guru: Sparky Lyle.

Until retiring in 2012, Lyle spent 15 years as manager of the Somerset Patriots, an independent minor-league team in New Jersey. That’s where he’s lived for ages, and where I tracked him down.

Though he’ll turn 70 this season, Lyle sounds as feisty and funny as during his heyday. Despite success as a manager of young players, he shares my frustration with America’s pastime. In fact, when he sees former Yankees teammates at golf tourneys or memorabilia shows, they bemoan the same thing.

“We talk a lot about that: what happened?” Lyle says. His rasp gives way to a bemused chuckle, continuing with, “I have no idea. Everything has changed.”

As a player, Lyle knew the game, a student smart enough to ask old-timers for advice. For instance, his career took off after Ted Williams told him to develop a wicked slider. Bingo.

But today, young pro players don’t like to listen to veteran players like Lyle. They’re into complex regimens involving nutrition and training. They’re better athletes nowadays, but not baseball students. They disdain bull sessions about strategies like working hitters or working counts.

“I don’t know what the hell these guys are thinking,” Lyle says. “They don’t know the game. They look at me like I’m an alien.”

With video games and other distractions, kids don’t read books like before — certainly not musty old baseball stories.

Page 3 of 3 - “Most of them don’t know the history of baseball,” Lyle says. “They just don’t want to hear it. ”

History means everything to baseball, which to fans is less a sport than an heirloom. Pro players of my youth revered their predecessors, but not so much anymore. Cut the continuity, and baseball drifts away, sputtering and fading.

I knew all that when I called Lyle. But maybe I’d envisioned ol’ No. 28 coming out of the bullpen one more time to save the game. Granted, that’s a silly, unfair fantasy. But that’s what baseball used to be about — big dreams, the kind only kids dare to conjure.

“Times change,” Lyle says with a chuckle. “I guess you just move on.”

Maybe. And maybe I’ll go to a game this year. I’ll think about that, just as soon as I read a certain baseball book one more time. Thanks, Sparky.